The Benefits of Sage CRE (and Cloud Hosting)

Sage is a proven provider of financial software for tens of thousands of construction and real estate companies in North America. The bulk of these customers use Sage 100 Contractor or Sage 300 CRE, which are robust and full of features tailored for the CRE industry. With the rise of remote work and the cloud technology to support it, many companies are looking for a way to access the full desktop version of Sage on the cloud. Let’s take a look at one such company before examining the benefits of Sage CRE and cloud-hosted Sage.

Construction Firm Partners with Swizznet to Bring the Benefits of Sage CRE to the Cloud

The benefits of Sage 300 CRE are numerous, which is why many firms are looking for a way to access the full desktop version of Sage on the cloud. Case in point: a D.C.-based construction company that is now a Swizznet customer. The team wanted to evolve its Sage 300 CRE software to support virtual workflows. 

One way to do that would have been to build out a private cloud server, but they wanted to focus on their core business rather than deal with the IT headaches involved with building their own server. With no pure cloud version available, the company believed it was impossible to take their current Sage 300 CRE to an anytime, anywhere environment.

When the company learned about Swizznet’s cloud hosting for Sage 300 CRE they signed up. The results? The company successfully transitioned to the cloud while leaving team members feeling like they were working from their own desktops. The CEO was amazed at how much faster his applications ran. He was thrilled that his IT department saved $5,000-6,000 on hardware and maintenance costs. The General Contractor’s accounting team enjoy the 24/7 engineering and support, which rescued 30-40 billable hours on a recent project.

This is merely one example of thousands of Sage 300 CRE customers who have partnered with Swizznet to bring the full power of Sage to the cloud. Let’s explore why construction companies continue to invest in Sage, then examine the extra power you get with cloud hosting.

Why Construction Companies Continue to Invest in Sage

Sage 300 CRE is considered the gold standard and continues to be the leading construction and real estate industry financial management solution. Its focus is construction and property management. It includes construction-specific modules, people-oriented collaboration tools, and project and property management features.

Due to the history and evolution of Sage, its features go beyond what is available in simpler financial software solutions. For instance, it includes granular cost tracking, tunable contract management, improved estimating tools, and sophisticated integration between payroll, billing, and invoicing.

Its customizable reports with power add-ons improve visibility with real-time collaboration throughout all phases of projects. Ultimately, it minimizes risks related to subcontractors and vendors by providing a consolidated platform for managing and controlling jobs.

The Types of Companies for Which Sage 300 CRE Is Best Suited

Sage 300 CRE is ideal for CRE industry companies that need financial and service operations, business visibility, document, project, service, and real estate management. It enables seamless field-to-office communication and provides business intelligence that is highly customizable.

It’s important to note that Sage 300 CRE is a robust, powerful solution so it probably only makes sense once you get past a certain size. A startup with five employees may not have the resources or requirements to justify the investment.

Companies considering Sage 300 CRE, or those who already use it, should also examine how their workflow requirements have changed. Files that used to be stored in cabinets now live on the cloud. Subcontractors now sign forms digitally. Invoices and bids now pass through online portals rather than fax machines or FedEx. 

Hence, forward-looking companies need a way to access financial data remotely via the web. They require support for on-the-go reporting, customized reporting tools, and a way to manage projects and services from the field. Sage 300 CRE doesn’t support this on its own, which is where Swizznet cloud hosting comes in.

The Benefits of Sage 300 CRE Are Multiplied with Cloud Hosting from Swizznet

Swizznet has been partnering with Sage software and their certified partners for over 10 years to provide the best of breed and best value hosted platform to over 3,000 CRE industry-specific customers. This means the customer, Sage certified partner, and Swizznet all work together to ensure optimal efficiency and experience on your hosted solution. 

Cloud-hosted Sage 300 CRE with Swizznet brings numerous benefits. It allows any time, anywhere user-based access for your entire organization from leadership to accounting to remote field users. Swizznet takes on the IT headaches of managing your own server in-house. You get enterprise-grade PCI and HIPAA compliant technology with top-notch security and 24/7/365 obsessive support. Swizznet offers 99.95% uptime SLA enterprise technology on INAP (private), Azure (public), or Google Cloud platforms. Customers can also add Office 365 and dozens of top apps to any account for an end-to-end solution.

With Swizznet, you can also enjoy significant financial benefits. Managing an on-premise server is not just a one-time cost. There are licensing maintenance and support costs that add up each year. Swizznet’s ROI tool can show you how you will save thousands by moving to a private server hosted by Swizznet.

“With Swizznet, our firm doesn’t have to be in the IT business — we can now focus on accounting. Our clients have instant access to their accounting system and it gives them peace of mind.And to top it off, they have an amazing technical support response team,“ — Elizabeth Mance / Accountability Services, LLC